EL PESIMISMO ALEGRE (MI SUICIDIO)

Dear friend,
Yesterday I lied to you. I had a duty to be cautious, because I do not want anything to prevent me from taking my own life. When you receive this note, I shall be dead (unless I have failed). I have abused too much, both what was mine and what belonged to others, and that is irreparable. Goodbye.
H.R.

In My Suicide, a book of deep and decisive sincerity, Henri Roorda unfolds the essential questions of life, love, society, work and pleasure, while preparing for his end. This existentialist text *avant la lettre*, concise and as pure as the beauty that bound him to life, was originally entitled *Joyful Pessimism*. Henri Roorda was not a sick man, nor a desperate one, nor someone consumed by an impossible passion. He had been a dandy, a lover of “the fruits of the earth”, a sensual man who delighted in worldly pleasures. *Joyful Pessimism* is a manifesto infused with his distinctive humour and fatalistic irony. Now, Mario Gas takes to the stage to reclaim his theatrical memory and defend his principles.